Problems with the criminal justice system are vast, and poverty (and profit) play a significant role.
No person in America should be locked up because they are poor. Yet, every day we see homeless people arrested for sleeping outside; parents who can’t afford to purchase their release from jail; and people who cycle in and out of jail because they can’t afford to pay old fines as their debt grows from new ones. Meanwhile, cities and counties fill their coffers from the fines and fees that are imposed on people who are struggling just to survive. We need a criminal justice system that puts people over profit and helps to make vulnerable people more stable, not less stable.
-From The American Bar Association
(linked & cited below)
Source citation: Mathews II, John, and Felipe Curiel. "Criminal Justice Debt Problems." American Bar Association, 30 Nov. 2019, www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/ economic-justice/criminal-justice-debt-problems/. Accessed 18 Aug. 2020.
Search for full-length films and film segments in Films on Demand, one of the streaming databases at GRC. Or consider some of the other resources listed and linked below, including a short list of featured films.
Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal by 
The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives by 
Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.: How the Working Poor Became Big Business by 
Confronting Suburban Poverty in America by 
Inequality in America: Race, Poverty, and Fulfilling Democracy's Promise by 
The Jail: Managing the Underclass in American Society by 
The Rich And The Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto by